One addict helping another is the most effective and time proven way to recover.
http://www.sexualrecovery.org/
Our purpose is to recover from sexual addiction and to help others recover. For us, "to recover" means ending our sexually compulsive behavior and healing the emotional wounds that fostered the behavior.
How can our program help if an individual's most vigorous efforts have failed? Our program offers what is not in any individual's power to provide: communion with others, mutual love, compassion and fellowship. Our addiction is like a small secret room, a very private place we enter to be completely alone. This place feels like an integral part of ourselves, but it is one that can never be shared with anyone.
As sex addicts, most of us are deeply ashamed of our compulsive behavior and this creates even thicker walls between us and others.
Our addiction caused us to withdraw, so we lost meaningful contact with other people.
We struggled to keep our addiction a secret, especially from those we loved and who loved us. But this secret world was killing us.
When newcomers attend their first meetings, they are often astounded to hear others sharing the details of their addiction openly, thoroughly, and honestly.
Newcomers realize that they have found a place where they can open that room inside themselves, for the first time sharing completely with other people. What they share about themselves is treated with respect, compassion and confidentiality. They are entirely welcomed by a fellowship of other men and women. The healthy desire for communion with others, thwarted so long by the existence of that secret, shameful world, finally finds a place of fulfillment.
In the fellowship we learn about the Twelve Steps, which are suggested as an integral part of our program of recovery. They are simple, thoughtful tools that, when applied with sincerity, demand a rigorous honesty about our addiction, our relationship with ourselves and others, and our spiritual nature.
The Steps provide a framework for a housecleaning of the self which leads to a personal, emotional and spiritual renewal.
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A 12-Step Group offers support seven days a week, it also offers peer identification, so people can start to feel less lonely and isolated with their addiction. Knowing and being with others who have the same problem can be immensely healing.
In the Twelve Step fellowships, there is no requirement for membership other than the desire to stop a compulsive sex behavior. Attendance is not taken, and the makeup and size of the meeting can vary from week to week.
In fellowship meetings, contributions are voluntary, as is the leadership. Members chair meetings, but their commitment is usually for one month at a time.
Opening and closing rituals vary somewhat among the groups, but they include group recitation of a statement:
· We come together as a group to be honest with ourselves and with each other
· What's said in the group stays in the group
· Honesty is the key to sobriety
Sex Addicts Anonymous - SAA: www.sexaa.org or www.saa-recovery.org/ (why two different web addresses?)
SAA: Sex Addicts Anonymous This program is open to both heterosexual and homosexual men and women who want to learn to abstain from self-defined "bottom-line behaviors" such as compulsive Internet sex, use of prostitutes, massage parlors, and the like. Masturbation is optional, as SAA members are encouraged to develop their own abstinence plan with feedback from sponsors and group members.
Sexual Compulsives Anonymous - SCA: www.sca-recovery.org/
Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous - SLAA: www.slaafws.org/
Sexaholics Anonymous - SA: www.sa.org/
This 12-Step program is the strictest in its definition of sexual sobriety. Masturbation is discouraged, as is homosexual sex. Sobriety is defined as "No sexual behavior outside of a committed marital relationship between a man and a woman." Members are primarily heterosexual men, along with some heterosexual women. Sexual offenders often discover that the strict boundaries of SA are helpful for their recovery. Lists of meetings and other information may be obtained by emailing saico@sa.org
SLAA: Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous This program is similar to SAA in that both heterosexual and homosexual men and women are welcome to attend. More women tend to attend SLAA because of the emphasis on "love addiction," defined as a pattern of painful or obsessive romantic relationships. Members are encouraged to set appropriate behavioral boundaries with the help of sponsors and group members. This program is helpful for both sex addicts and those who consistently involve themselves in abusive, non-nurturing relationships. Contact their site: www.slaafws.org
Sexual Recovery Anonymous – SRA: http://sexualrecovery.org/
Recovering Couples Anonymous: http://www.recovering-couples.org/
Codependents of Sex Addicts: (related to SAA) http://www.cosa-recovery.org/
S-Anon (related to SA): http://www.sanon.org/
The partner program to SA is S-Anon (as Al-Anon is to AA) S-Anon helps wives and other family members to learn how to set appropriate boundaries, and to focus on their own issues while supporting one another.
The premise of these 12-step recovery programs, based on the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous, is that by one sex addict helping another, the resulting positive spiritual growth will help the sex addict abstain from sexually compulsive behavior.
The idea of 12-step recovery programs is that when groups of individuals gather to solve their common problems with addiction, alcoholism, or any other compulsive behavior, the shame of acting out is diminished.
The idea is that when members of these 12-step recovery meetings “share in a general way, what we were like, what happened, and what we are like now”, that there is fostered a camaraderie among members that transcends their shame.
In most recovery programs, a great emphasis is placed on changing "people, places, and things" associated with the addiction. The purpose of this sort of guideline is to help break the psychological dependency.
Meetings are the core of our fellowship we all contribute to and share. By attending meetings, we affirm our commitment to help ourselves to recover - here we can:
In listening to others, we gain new insight and awareness by identifying with feelings and experiences.
Meetings help us to realize that we are not alone!
A recovering person learns to how to get help from several sources and not to face the pain of the disease alone.
"Self-knowledge and self-improvement are very difficult for most people. It usually needs great courage and long struggle" --Abraham Maslow.
This is a simple program but it isn't easy. We cannot take the principles we learn and thereby possess them as if we were taking a class or reading a book. We need to live them. We can only get this program by participating with others who are also on the journey. Gradually we absorb it into every fiber of our being. This takes time and dedication.
The honesty required is sometimes frightening and painful. Anyone who remains faithful to this program has great courage and deserves deep respect. But we do not have to wait long to begin receiving the rewards. New freedoms, good feelings, and friendships quickly develop, and we are promised in this program to continue growing and to receive more benefits throughout our lives. What rewards have come from our courage and struggle?
Research about recovery from sexual addiction has indicated that 12-step meetings are important for success. Those who do not attend 12-step meetings have a much more difficult time recovering, if they do at all. In many ways recovery from significant sexual addiction can be more difficult than recovering from some of the other addictions. The heavy prevalence of sexual abuse in the backgrounds of sex addicts is one reason. In addition, sexual addiction fundamentally involves a problem with intimacy, something important for successful recovery.
Twelve-step meetings have been the source of much public attention because they have helped many people. They offer the sex addict a means of social support that helps break isolation and lessen paralyzing feelings of shame.
They also offer an opportunity for nonjudgmental accountability that can strengthen ones commitment to recover and to live with more day-to-day honesty and integrity.
The meetings have their shortfalls, of course, as surely as do the individuals who attend them. Also, at any one point some meetings are going to be “better” than others. One cannot not expect perfection from meetings. However, individual meetings grow and change over time as do the 12-step organizations themselves.
People sometimes ask about whether both 12-step meetings and psychotherapy
are needed, or if one replaces the other.
For many sex addicts meetings alone are not going to be adequate for recovery,
just as psychotherapy is typically not enough by itself for recovery.
Research has indicated that it is important to include a period of psychotherapy
with a therapist who is competent working with sexual addiction.
…The Twelve Step programs seem to help in normalizing the neurobiochemistry.
This, of course, is only speculation, since there are no scientific studies in
this area. Such an idea is at present impossible to test in people. However,
sexual abstinence with caring, loving help and the observed experiences of
others seems to make the acute withdrawal phase less painful or, at least, more
tolerable.
The feeling of safety gained from sponsors, Twelve Step meetings, and other
members of the program, as well as in group and individual therapy, should help
to reduce the chronic stresses these patients experience in dealing with people
and life. Overcoming the paralyzing fear of sharing in meetings, with sponsors
and other members of the program, helps to remove or reduce the stress of
secrecy, with a resulting decrease in the "fight or flight" neuroendocrine
challenge. The recovery process is a desensitization to fear and risk taking.
People in a state of meditation or prayer and who accept a Higher Power (God),
seem to have profoundly different neurobiochemical events going on in their
brains than people who are actively involved in addiction, who are hyperactive
and have abnormal levels of various hormones, such as adrenaline, as well as
other neurotransmitters, coursing through their systems. …
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The Program helps the addict to, "separate themselves as individuals from their addiction".
The Program teaches the addict that they do not need the addiction to survive, but need the Program because of the addictions power.
By admitting the addictions power, hope emerges from connecting with others and Higher Power. The fellowship of the Program surrounds participants with people who have suffered in the same way. They no longer feel unique or lonely. They trust and are trusted with personal secrets."
When the addict recognizes how powerless and unmanageable they are over their addiction, they start to live a life which focuses on being real, being vulnerable and growing human relationships (as opposed to sex).
Members of 12 steps groups continue to learn about the process (grow) through teaching others.
See also: